Princeton University Athletics
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February 10, 2000 | General
There's more to Susan Rea than straight-A's. There's also soccer, basketball, baseball, badminton and even Australian Rules Football.
She wrote her first play when she was six, built a working electric motor in elementary school and took classes at Stanford while in the eighth grade. Her grade-point average through three years at Princeton University-4.06 on a 4.0 scale in chemical engineering, not exactly something you can bluff your way through-would keep two students in good academic standing.
It's impressive enough on its own merit, it's almost beyond comprehension when you realize that she may be a better athlete than student.
In the unique and entirely refreshing world of Susan Rea, there are very few boundaries and almost no limits. It's a world where you don't say "okay" when people say "you can't do that."
Not content to be a two-sport college athlete, Rea decided last spring to be a two-continent college athlete. After playing soccer and basketball her first five semesters at Princeton, Rea decided to spend the spring of her junior year in Australia, where she played no fewer than six sports. One of them was baseball, where she was the lone woman on a men's team.
"Sports have always been a big part of my life," Rea says. "I looked for opportunities to continue with them while I was on the other side of the globe."
In addition to playing for the baseball team at the University of Melbourne, she also competed in soccer, basketball, softball, track and field, badminton and crew. She even experimented with Australian Rules Football, a sport that isn't usually played by 5' 6" American women.
"Playing sports in Australia was a great way to get to know other people right away," she says. "It let me see different parts of Melbourne than I normally would have. Just the experience of being on a team with someone and sharing that common interest creates an immediate bond that opens up learning and exchange off the field or court as well."
Rea came to Princeton from Palo Alto, Calif., where her parents are both professors at Stanford. The oldest of six children, she grew up on the Stanford campus.
"My favorite sport was always baseball," Rea says. "I was the only girl to try out for Little League when I was nine, and I was drafted for the highest league. I continued to play baseball in Babe Ruth and for my high school team. It wasn't a big deal for me, because I played with guys for so long. Sometimes it was a big deal to the teams we played. I remember I hit a home run in the city tournament when I was 12, and the pitcher took off his glove and jumped up and down on it on the mound."
Rea played soccer, volleyball and basketball in high school in addition to baseball, and she has been a three-year starter for Princeton's soccer team. Her first three years at Princeton have seen her go directly from soccer to basketball, and if that wasn't enough, she even approached the baseball coach about playing in the spring. Unfortunately for her, the junior varsity baseball program at Princeton was dropped, though she has worked out with the varsity team at times.
There is another side to her, of course, the academic one. Her parents began to read to her when she was a baby, she began to read back before she was four. Beyond her better-than-perfect GPA at Princeton, Rea has also worked three summers at the Center For Advanced Medical Informatics at Stanford. Her most recent gig has been doing research in the oncology division of Stanford's medical school, the working title for her senior thesis is "Designer Bone Graft Materials for Orofacial Repair."
"How would I describe Susan Rea?" asks Princeton assistant basketball coach Daphne Robinson. "First of all, she's a great kid. Second, she is levels and levels ahead of anyone else I've ever met academically. I look at her, and I realize that she can make a real difference in this world."
Back from her trip Down Under, Rea is ready for her senior year at Princeton. First up is the soccer, in which Rea was an All-Ivy selection last year. After graduation she will look to pursue possible athletic opportunities in Europe, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. After that there will be graduate school, either in engineering or more likely in an MD/Ph.D. program.
"There are so many things that I want to do and I think I can do," she says. "So much has been made accessible to me, and I've tried to make the most of my opportunities."
A scholar? You might say that. An athlete? Definitely. Is there anything Susan Rea can't do?
"I can't carry a tune to save my life," she says.
That's okay. We'll forgive her.
by Jerry Price